Swan Song
by poeticgrace
Summary: In her death, Molly leads Daniel to where he always belonged. Daniel/Betty ONE SHOT.


It had been exactly six hours to the day that Betty Suarez had received an urgent text message that had brought her to a Manhattan penthouse. In the hours that had passed since that dark evening, she had barely left Daniel's side for more than a few minutes and then only to deal with the details of the funeral and memorial service that she'd organized in Molly's honor. There had been a parade of visitors in and out of his place, but he hadn't felt like seeing most of them. In fact, the only person that he had really let inside other than Betty was his mother, but even Claire seemed to have a hard time reaching him. It was Betty that he continued to turn to time and time again, even if it was just to have someone sit with him in his dark bedroom in silence. With the shades drawn and his cell phone shut off, it was the first time in his life that he had ever cut himself off from the outside world.

However, there would be no more of that today. No, today, Daniel would play the role of the proper grieving husband. He would show up at the memorial service in the new black Armani suit Betty had sent over and sit quietly in the front pew of the church while people stood up and honored his beloved wife. He would sit between his mother and his best friend while everyone pretended to know how he was feeling, understanding full well that no one could even begin to comprehend the utter agony he felt. He would greet his guests afterward, choking down some of those appetizers that Betty told him she had ordered and likely drink far too many glasses of wine while he drowned out the small talk he was forced to make. And when everyone was finally gone, he would crawl back into his bed and sob silently until the morning came. Maybe then he could finally start to make sense of everything again.

"Daniel, the car is on its way over," Betty told him softly as she came into his bedroom. Gone was her typical bright hues and crazy patters, replaced with an appropriately solemn black suit and low heels. His slate grey silk tie was draped over her forearm. She paused beside the bed where he sat on the end of the mattress and handed it over to him. Daniel started to take it but his hand dropped heavily back to his lap. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to do this, so Betty was just going to have to do it for him. Sliding the tie around his neck, she set to fashioning it in a knot while he stared blankly at the wall behind her. "Are you don't want one of those pills that the doctor subscribed? He said that you would be okay if you just took one."

He shook his head no and rose slowly to follow her into the living room. He hadn't been able to spend more than a few minutes in the room since he had come home to find the paramedics rolling her covered body out the front door. It was where the nurse had found her, curled into a ball on the couch just like he used to when he would come home from the office late. He felt guilty; he should have been here with her that night. Instead, he had listened to her and went to the awards dinner. When he should have been thinking about his wife, he had been worried about Betty's job and what he was going to say in his speech and smiling for the cameras. All of that seemed so insignificant compared to the fact that he was losing his wife at the very moment that he was receiving some crystal award that would just end up in a case at the office.

Betty's cell phone rang from across the room. She scurried toward the kitchen, her heels clicking on the tile floor as she frantically began to search through her oversized bag. She had been living on what her father had sent over from her house in Queens. "Hello?" she greeted the caller kindly. He watched as Betty listened intently. "Alright, we will be right down." Punching the button on her red BlackBerry, she tossed the device back into her bag and turned to him. "It's time."

Daniel nodded solemnly as he started toward the door. Betty held it open for him and waited until he was well down the hallway before locking up the penthouse with the spare key she'd had for the past three years. They waited silently for the elevator to come, neither of them saying a word as they slipped into the lift. Betty reached forward and pressed the button to send them down to the lobby. Daniel pretended to be interested in the speckled floor – anything to keep his mind off Molly or the fact that he was going to say his final goodbyes to the woman he loved. He was relieved when the bell dinged and the doors slid open to let them out onto the ground floor. "This one over here," he told Betty knowingly, recognizing the car service as the same one his mother had booked when his father had died.

The ride over to the cathedral was long and intense, neither of them saying much of anything that really mattered. Claire was waiting outside the doors when they arrived, her face hidden behind a veil despite the barrage of photographers and paparazzi waiting to greet them. Betty and Claire guarded him protectively, tucking him between them as they pushed through the crowd. The rest of the Suarez family were stationed in the back of the sanctuary. Betty embraced her father briefly while her sister hugged Daniel. "I think we're supposed to take our seats," Claire whispered to Betty as the organ music started to swell, filling the intimate room to the rafters.

"They'll wait for him," Betty replied firmly but gently back as she watched her father comfort her boss and friend. Daniel spokes quietly to Igancio. The two of them now belonged to a club that no one wanted to join, the widowers brotherhood. Claire excused herself to greet some distant relatives while Betty waited for Daniel. He finally broke away from her father but was immediately stopped by business associates who wanted to give their condolences. Daniel managed to keep it together for a few moments, but Betty could see that his reserve was starting to wear then. She immediately appeared at his side. "Daniel, we need to take our seat."

With a polite smile to the older man and woman he had been speaking to, Daniel allowed Betty to guide him up the center aisle toward his assigned pew. However, he stopped immediately in his tracks when he looked up at saw Molly's sister standing there. With golden blonde hair and sea green eyes just like Molly's, he could barely stand to look at her. His breath caught in his throat as his knees went weak. Betty could sense that something was wrong and slipped her tiny hand in his. "Come on, Daniel, we can get through this," she encouraged him in a low voice, sending a shiver up his spine. She had always managed to convince him that he could do anything, even when he was pretty sure that he should just chuck it all and give up. "Just put one foot in front of the other, and we can go home. You have to do this for Molly."

The managed to make it to the pew without any further incidents. For the next hour, Daniel sat stoically by Betty's side, pretending to listen to eulogy after eulogy and never letting go of her hand. She handed him a freshly pressed handkerchief at one point and elbowed him gently whenever it was time for him to speak. He took a deep breath and accepted the speech Betty had helped him compose the night before. The entire church was perfectly still and quiet, making it all that much more eerie to be there. Climbing the stairs that led to the podium, he tried not to let his nerves or grief best him as he looked down at the note card covered in Betty's precise scrawl.

The words blurred together as the tears finally started to come. He had made it this far, but he just couldn't do this. He knew how to play a lot of parts – from the suave ladies man to the caring magazine boss to the determined businessman in charge of one of the world's largest media empires. He knew how to play the dutiful son and the supportive brother and the reluctant media darling. He knew how to position himself as a concerned philanthropist and a superior athlete and even someone who could have a conversation with some of the brightest minds in the nation. He had even gotten pretty good at being a best friend and a husband, thanks to Betty and Molly. He just didn't know how to play someone who needed help.

And then, as if she could read his mind, Betty was by his side, reaching for the card and readjusting the microphone to her level. Just like she had been there that night when he had needed her, she was at his side right now. She had always been there when he had needed her, every single time he'd called in the more than thirty-six months he had known her. However, in all that time, he had never needed her as much as he needed her right now. He knew that he couldn't do this alone. He couldn't say the words that he needed to say to give Molly proper tribute. He didn't know how to say goodbye.

"Molly was probably the closest living embodiment of an angel that most of us are every going to get to know. With her kind eyes and beautiful smile, you knew that you were in the presence of pure goodness every time you were around her," she read, pausing to smile genuinely out to the audience. "The last time that Daniel saw her, she was still playing the guardian angel to him. Wearing his favorite red dress, she showed up exactly at the minute that he needed her most. That night was her final swan song, her gift to him. Molly was always doing that with her perfect timing. They were connected in a way that few people could ever understand."

Daniel choked back his sob before reaching up to cover her hand on the podium to stop her. He needed to do this. He had said things the night he had won his award that he later realized had very little to do with his wife. Sure, he had said that he loved her, but it had mostly been about how Betty had allowed him to change. He knew that if it wasn't for the woman next to him, his heart would have never been open enough to meet Molly in the first place. "Loving Molly is the crowning achievement of my life. She came along at a point in my life when I really thought that I had lost everything," he confessed to the crowd. "I had no way of knowing just a few short months ago how she would change my life and my heart so completely. Wherever she is today, I know that Molly left this earth knowing just how much she means to me. She was always finding little ways to take care of me, and in her final moments here, I know that she was doing just that. I saw the signs, Mol, I finally get it."

Most people were mystified by Daniel's cryptic speech but not Claire Meade. She understood immediately that Molly had seen what Claire had long known. In her final moments on earth, Molly had led Daniel to Betty. She rose to hug her son tightly as he returned to his seat. They held each other's gaze as he pulled away. The slightest smile played across his lips as he sat back down and reached for Betty's hand.

By the time they finally managed to escape back to the car, both Daniel and Betty were worn out from the polite pretense they had held up throughout the funeral. People were already back at the penthouse waiting for them. "What I wouldn't give to disappear for a few days," he murmured as he leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. "What do you say that we take a long trip after this is all over? We can just go lie on the beach somewhere and forget our troubles."

A vacation sounded about perfect to Betty at this point. They could both use some time out of the city. Daniel was mourning the loss of his wife, and Betty wasn't sure what else to do for him. She hadn't even had time to think about how her own relationship had ended. Instead, she decided to focus her attention on her friend. "Hey, Daniel, can I ask you something?" she asked. Daniel nodded his attention as he turned toward her. "When you were talking back there at the church about signs, what did you mean?"

Daniel had first realized that Molly had showed up at the awards ceremony to say her final goodbye that very night when he was still standing there talking to Betty. He had known even before he got back to the penthouse that she was gone. It had only taken him a few moments to type out a text message to Betty before he had collapsed on the stoop and started to sob. She had shown up twenty minutes later and held him outside on the sidewalk for hours. He had been really glad that he had a friend like her that night, but it hadn't seemed like anything more. It was only that night when he was alone in his bed, staring up at his ceiling, that he had realized that there was something else to the situation. There had been a very specific reason that Molly had stood at Betty's side that night. That was who she had chosen for him.

They had fought just a few days before about that very thing when he had falsely assumed a set up at the Mets game and she had made some senseless joke that night at home. He had confessed to his mother that he didn't want to think about life without Molly, but he knew that he would have to do it. Molly's jokes were her way of dealing with everything. It was her way of telling him that she needed for him to be okay. Sending Betty to him was her way of ensuring that it would happen. He was going to have to move on. He would fall in love again. There would be moments of utter joy when he would swear he had never felt better in his life, and this was the woman that Molly wanted for him.

"I just meant that I have some pretty amazing people in my life and that I should cherish every last moment I have with them," he said, knowing that it was only half the truth. Betty smiled at him widely and slid across the seat to sit next to him. She held his hand in her lap and started to hum his favorite song softly beneath her breath. It was the smallest thing but it brought him the most comfort. "Thank you for everything you've done, Betty. I know that I wouldn't have made it this far without you, and I won't be able to go on without you by my side."

"You could do it if you had to," she promised him, "but lucky for both of us, you don't have to. You need me, you got me."

It was a very small beginning, but it was one that they would both recount years later as the minute they first started to fall in love. It would take months before he was anywhere near ready to move on and even longer before Betty would trust herself enough to fully admit that she was in love with him. However, slowly and thoroughly, Daniel and Betty began to fall deeper and deeper until their lives were so entwined in each other's that it was impossible to say where one ended and the other began. True to his promise, Daniel never forgot the first woman to hold his heart completely. Far different from Betty but equally wonderful in her own way, the couple considered her their own personal guardian angel and often thanked her for bringing them together. And when Betty gave birth to their first child, a beautiful little girl with her mother's dark locks and her father's gentle eyes, they named her Molly in honor of the woman who had impacted them so profoundly. It was Molly's swan song that brought them together, but it was a melody of their own that held them together.

_Fin._


End file.
